Reps. Issa And Maloney Team Up To Obstruct Access To Medical Research (Again)

January 10, 2012 9:00 am ET —
Brian Powell

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), part of the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services, invests "over $31.2 billion
annually in medical research for the American people," making it the biggest
financier of medical research in the world. This is a significant investment
for the American people, but the research into chronic and infectious diseases,
medical technology, and general human health has provided invaluable returns on that commitment. Since
2008, when NIH implemented a congressionally approved open-access policy, one
of those returns has been free
public access to the results of those taxpayer-funded studies.

But since 2008, the science, technology and medical (STM)
publishing industry has been spending
big money trying to coax members of Congress into shutting down this
benefit. Just before Christmas, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) introduced the thirdincarnation
of the Research Works Act (H.R. 3699), a twice-failed
bill that would
"prohibit federal agencies from conditioning their grants to require that
articles reporting on publicly funded research be made accessible to the public
online."

Issa has received
tens of thousands
of dollars from the STM publishing industry in support of the bills, and his
co-sponsor on the Research Works Act, Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney (NY), is
one of the top two recipients
of money from special interest groups that support H.R. 3699. Interest groups
that supported a previous version of the bill, which Maloney also co-sponsored,
lined her pockets to over six
figures.

The financial connections have raised
eyebrows
and ruffled
feathers among members of the scientific community,
who see the bill as an industry favor that benefits a few specific companies at
the expense of a significant public good. Michael Eisen, an evolutionary
biologist at UC Berkeley, writes:

Why, you might ask, would Carolyn Maloney, representing a liberal
Democratic district in New York City that is home to many research
institutions, sponsor such a reactionary piece of legislation that benefits a
group of wealthy publishers at the expense of the American public? Hmm.
Wouldn't happen to have anything to do with the fact that she's the biggest
recipient of campaign contributions from the publishing industry, would it?

According to MapLight, which tracks
political contributions, Dutch publisher Elsevier and its senior executives
made 31 contributions to members of the House in 2011, of which 12 went to
Representative Maloney. This includes contributions from 11 senior executives
or partners, only one of whom is a resident of her district.

Proponents of the bill argue that, unlike the
researchers themselves, the publishers
of journal articles that are based on the publicly funded studies receive no
federal funding, so the free access policy unfairly disadvantages their ability
to make a profit. The Association of American Publishers sums it up, claiming the
Research Works Act will prevent "regulatory interference with private-sector
research publishers in the production, peer review and publication" of
scientific journals.

Issa attempted
to justify his position on the Research Works Act, which some view as at
odds with his recent attacks on the Stop Online Piracy Act, by arguing that we
must "protect the value added to publicly funded research by the private sector
and ensure that there is still an active commercial and non-profit research
community."

On the latter, Issa is being disingenuous — the STM
publishing market grew 3.4
percent in 2011 to $21.1 billion despite global belt-tightening and
economic uncertainty. Online services, with which the Research Works Act is
particularly concerned, saw the fastest growth.

The text of the Research Works Act
suggests that such private sector journals add value to the research that they
publish in the form of peer review and editing. Note, however, that peer review for scientific journals is generally
done by other scientists in the relevant field for free. Sure, the journal
editors need to be able to scare up some likely candidates for peer reviewers,
email them, and secure their cooperation, but the value being added in terms of
peer reviewing here is added by volunteers. [...]

Maybe editing adds some value,
although journal editors of private sector journals have been taken to task for
favoring flashy results, and for occasionally subverting their own peer review
process to get those flashy results published. But there's something like
agreement that the interaction between scientists that happens in peer review
(and in post-publication discussions of research findings) is what makes it
scientific knowledge. That is to say, peer review is recognized as the
value-adding step science could not do without.

Stemwedel poignantly concludes that "If members of the public
have to pay again to access research their tax
dollars already paid for, they are likely
to be peeved. ... A rightfully angry public could mean less public funding for
scientific research — which means that there are pragmatic, as well as ethical,
reasons for scientists to oppose the Research Works Act."